


gøner

by blurrycopaface



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blood and Injury, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Mental Instability, Psychological Horror, Psychosis, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurrycopaface/pseuds/blurrycopaface
Summary: don’t let me be
Kudos: 2





	gøner

**Author's Note:**

> _happy 5 years to Blurryface  
> _  
>  something of a vent fic  
> also shout out to the doppleganger short story on reddit and the goner music video for inspiration

It began with a shape.

I kept seeing it day after day.

It started as just a red blur in the corners of my eye, distractingly appearing while I would be trying to talk to someone. 

Or as a dark form standing in the background of my reflection in the mirror, just out of my line of sight so I would have to squint to really try and see if there truly was a humanoid figure beside my bathroom door.

The sight startled me greatly, to say the least. I would try to turn my head quickly to see the person in the room with me, but every time I did, the dark form would disappear in the actuality of my vision.

I kept thinking he would just go away, he didn’t seem malevolent, or dangerous, he was perhaps even a little bit shy. Still, it gave me chills and was rather distracting from my day to day life.

I tried to ignore him, holding my breath every time I would get dressed or go brush my teeth, avoiding looking at my reflection, knowing that he most likely would be haunting my backdrop.

He started to get closer. Each week went by and his shape became more clear, proximity shrinking in the mirror.

As he became more sure of himself, I started to see him better. 

He wore black clothing and a red hat. His hands were black, his neck was too. 

Strangely though, the closer he came to me and the more defined his outline became, the more blurry his face was.

I tried talking to him, but he never seemed to respond, just standing stoic and unmoving as always, watching me.

Then I stopped paying much attention to him, almost grew to become comfortable knowing there was a human shape always watching over me. 

I liked to believe he was some sort of guardian angel. 

Oh how wrong I was.

He mimicked my movements, when I raised my arm, he raised his, when I tilted my head, he followed.

He started pressing into the mirror, as if he wanted out, as if he thought _he_ was _me._

Then he disappeared for a while. 

It was a relief, albeit things felt almost empty without him, as if I somewhat missed the constant lingering company.

I thought of telling my wife, but feared she would think I was nuts. He was gone anyway.

I reassured myself it was all in my imagination, nothing more than an odd occurrence due to an overactive brain and just too little sleep.

But that’s when he started to speak.

The voice was low, grumbling, almost like a distortion of sound through a crackling speaker.

I tried to detect where it came from, but the direction seemed to be the inside of my own head. 

I dropped my razor in the sink while I was shaving, so alarmed by the sudden noise.

The reason I knew it was him was because I saw flashes of red again, like the strobes to a police car. I shut my eyes and they would still be there, pulsing and flaring in red.

The words were hard to make out at first.

What was he trying to tell me? 

Was it something important? Would he leave me alone once I knew?

I tried asking,

“What do you want?”

And his horrible voice told me,

**“OUT.”**

He was much more adamant this time.

He wasn’t only confined to the mirror anymore either, now standing beside my bed every night while I slept. I would squint my eyes open only slightly and be greeted by his dark form standing near my lamp, like a vampire watching its prey. 

His eyes were so bloody red. Had they always been red?

That’s when I decided to tell my wife.

She told me that everything was okay, despite the panicked look in her eyes; I was simply overworked, over caffeinated.

“Too much Red Bull.” She explained, in her soothing tone. “Just let it pass, like before.”

And I believed her.

So I watched television with him standing beside the screen, smiling with an unnaturally tilted head leering at my wife and I.

And I ate cereal in the morning while trying to blink the sleepiness from my eyes and ignore the black shadow that sat beside me at the table.

I went on walks and looked away from the red eyes peering out at me from the bushes. Anything for a sense of normalcy. But everywhere I turned, he was relentless.

“Please _go away_.”

I tried communicating to him more.

I believed in spirits, and I also believed I could have the upper hand in the situation if only I asserted myself.

“You are _not_ needed here.”

He would always respond with silence, or even worse, some garbled language I did not understand.

  
  


He was beginning to scare me.

The grinning face in my head, the voice that chanted that he needed out.

His words became more constant. Like a radio feed that was left on 24/7. 

Just white noise at first, rather omittable and then louder and louder until it was a roar in my skull.

I didn’t know how my wife couldn’t hear it.

“Shut up!” I pleaded and she looked at me with a pained expression.

He stretched his arms wide behind her, as if he was threatening to grab my wife.

“ _Don’t_ hurt her.” I warned, looking past my startled wife and glaring to this entity with all of my seething rage. 

My wife, turned to look behind her and cried at the mirror that showed nothing but her own reflection.

She still had those burn scars from two winters ago.

I stayed home from work.

I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t even really eat without him interrupting me somehow.

His black hands squeezing around my neck, forcing everything I tried to eat out of my stomach into the toilet bowl.

My wife was worried now.

“You need to go back to the psychiatrist.” She said. 

I tried explaining that this was beyond what a therapist could handle, this was paranormal, an insurmountable force that was something only I could deal with. 

She tried to understand me.

But she only could so much.

“You’re getting so thin.” She told me, with narrowed blue eyes.

“And you’re barely sleeping anymore.”

“Have you been taking your meds? When was the last time you bathed?”

I shook my head, avoiding eye contact with her.

I ran calloused fingertips down bumps of my ribcage.

I was in shambles. An empty shell of a man.

“Look at me. _Look at me.”_

I didn’t want to, I knew _he_ was standing behind her.

“I am not putting myself through this again, do you understand me?”

I tried to understand. I tried to keep her.

Maybe if I was able to scare him he would leave? I was in control, not him, I told myself. A mantra that I wrote in my journals and kept repeating in my head.

_I am in control._

I tried to run towards him or grab it whenever the shape appeared. I could never harm him, though, he dissipated or phased just out of my reach, fingertips brushing at what I thought felt like an icey cold gust of air.

I wasn’t going to give up that easily, though.

I battered my fists against the mirrors, breaking the one in the hallway, how could I deny his access to my world?

I screamed, cursed. I shucked knives at him and any other object I could find when he arose. Anything to scare him away from me, anything to assert dominance in my own home, in my own head.

I mistakenly lunged at my wife when she came into my office. I thought it was him. 

I felt so awful leaving bruises on her arms, but I couldn’t let him get the best of me. I kept on fighting.

I performed a ritual on myself and the house, something I found on an obscure forum online, thinking maybe I could banish this thing, or create a powerful enough charm, it would protect us from him. 

I burned bone meal and a red candle in the backyard, one that matched the hat he wore. I chanted and gave a small drop of my blood to the flame, like the website instructed.

That made him angry.

He shrieked at me the next time I was near a mirror, lunging out of it, blurry face contorted into a rageful scowl. I cried and held my hands over my ears as I listened to him wail,

“ **GIVE ME MORE.** **MORE BLOOD, MORE BLOOD, MORE BLOOD.”**

My wife told me it had gone too far when I woke up from attempted sleep for the 8th time in a row screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Please, _please_.” I pleaded while she packed her belongings.

“Please don’t do this.”

I watched her stuff clothing into bags, and zip up cases of papers.

“I am trying to defeat him.”

She handed me the divorce papers and I sobbed into my shaking hands.

She cried too, rubbing at those same burn scars that were still all my fault.

“There has never been a _him.”_ She told me. “It’s always been _you.”_

I was so alone now.

It was cold outside, February snow on the ground, encasing our home like a premeditated tomb.

I looked into the mirror and saw something I did not recognize. 

A skeletal man with sunken brown eyes, bruises on his arms and neck that looked terrifyingly like his own.

I was defeated.

Removed from all purpose and vigor of fight. This was a battle that I had hoisted white flags to, the evidence was as true as my appearance showed.

I was so alone, only I wasn’t.

I didn’t know what day it was, who or what was real anymore.

All the curtains stayed closed, windows shut like a prison cell.

His voice was so loud, all I saw was red, like I was seeing through his own eyes.

I screamed into the mirror, asking why, why he wanted me. Why he had been there for so many years, sitting in the passenger seat of my head like a vulture perched waiting to feed.

He just laughed, obscured face breaking into a wide white grin.

 **“I** **_AM_ ** **YOU.”**

I didn’t want to believe him.

He wanted to destroy me and I couldn’t let him.

He saw his opportunity.

In the bathroom is where he lunged at me from behind and choked me. I tried to grab at his hands that crushed my windpipe and miraculously in that moment, felt my nails sink into his flesh. 

This was it, I was finally able to combat him. So I ripped with all of my might.

I felt him screaming in my ear, heard the tearing of skin.

My heart hammered, hot sticky blood pouring down my neck where I was clawing at him viciously. 

_You cannot take me._

Every last drop of spite boiled up inside of me, the inspiration of vanquish burning hot through my weak body.

I managed to reach for the single razor on the counter, and plunged it into his hand that death gripped my throat.

He finally released me and I gasped for labored air, turning to face him only to see nothing at all.

Maybe I had done it. Maybe I had scared him enough, or maybe even, I had killed him.

I felt consummate, laughing strangledly and turning to the mirror to see a deluge of crimson down the front of my chest.

There was blood dripping from my mouth through my smiling teeth.

“It’s okay.” I repeated to myself in the mirror. “You did it. It's okay."

I washed the blood off my bruised hands, trying to calm my pattering pulse. 

I could move on now, I could be in control of my life again. 

But the relief only lasted a moment as I looked up into the mirror to wipe the blood off my neck, there he stood, blurry face smiling as crooked and wide as ever.

I had to do it. I had to get rid of him. There was only one more option I could think of.

The gasoline smelled like battery acid and was rather oily on my skin. 

I wasted three matches, my hands were shaking so much.

The house burned easily, my wife’s old room being swallowed up in golden flames.

It was acrid and monochrome outside, in contrast to the roaring heat and color of the fire. 

I watched it in awe, it was rather beautiful, dancing against the dark blue night.

Swaying shakily out onto the front lawn, snow crunching under foot, I coughed and knelt to the cold ground to rest.

I felt at peace, heart beat finally slowing.

My vision swam, orange and red. I wiped more blood off my chest that I had missed before.

He was finally gone, he had no where left to haunt, he had left me for good.

I was choking on the thick smoke of the fire, trying more fervently with each breath to get a gasp in, throat feeling tight and sore.

The flashes of red lights could have been from my own vision, but I heard sirens that made me think perhaps firefighters were nearby, responding to the beacon of flame that licked into the sky.

I turned then, only to look and see a shape standing directly beside me.

I tried yelling, but couldn’t make a sound from my throat.

The achromatic snow splashed crimson as I keeled over suddenly, coughing violently, hand coming up to touch at my neck and finally pull out the razor that had still been lodged there.

Everything felt very distant, and I slumped on my side onto the cold wet ground, defeatedly trying to make sense of anything at all.

Why... _why_ was he still here? I wanted to ask.

He tilted his head down to me, neck craning so far back I thought it would snap.

His face seemed very different suddenly, less obscured than ever before, grinning and illuminated by the orange glow of what once was my house. I blinked, realizing with mounting horror what I was finally seeing.

My wife had been right.

His face was mine.

  
  
  



End file.
